COURT CURBS AGENCY'S CONTROL OVER MINORITY VOTING DISTRICTS.Byline: The New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times Ruling in an important voting rights Voting rights The right to vote on matters that are put to a vote of security holders. For example the right to vote for directors. voting rights The type of voting and the amount of control held by the owners of a class of stock. case, the Supreme Court on Monday curbed the Justice Department's ability to insist on greater representation of minority voters as the price for approving redistricting redistricting: see legislative apportionment. plans. The court's 7-2 ruling applied to the provision of the Voting Rights Act Voting Rights Act Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 1965 to ensure the voting rights of African Americans. Though the Constitution's 15th Amendment (passed 1870) had guaranteed the right to vote regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” that requires nine Southern states Southern States U.S. Confederacy government of 11 Southern states that left the Union in 1860. [Am. Hist.: EB, III: 73] Dixie popular name for Southern states in U.S. and for song. [Am. Hist. and parts of several other states to obtain permission, known as preclearance, before putting any voting changes like redistricting plans into effect. At issue was the Justice Department's refusal, in 1993, to approve a redistricting plan for a rural Louisiana school board that retained all 12 of the previous plan's majority-white districts. The district, the Bossier Bossier may refer to:
Under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the state or local government seeking to make a voting or districting change has to convince the Justice Department or a three-judge panel of the federal district court here that the change does not have the purpose and will not have the effect of leaving minority voters in a worse position than they were in before. For 10 years, the Years, The the seven decades of Eleanor Pargiter’s life. [Br. Lit.: Benét, 1109] See : Time Justice Department has taken the view that it can deny preclearance not only to those voting changes that weaken the position of minority voters - the ``retrogression'' standard of Section 5 - but also to redistricting plans that do not improve those voters' position as much as might be theoretically possible. In a number of cases, including the one before the court Monday, the department denied preclearance to redistricting plans on the ground that they failed the test of another Voting Rights Act provision, Section 2. That section applies nationwide and bars any voting practice that has the effect of giving members of minorities ``less opportunity than other members of the electorate'' to elect representatives of their choice. To win a case under Section 2 does not require proof that the minority voters are in a worse position than before, only that they are not in as strong a position as they could be. By using Section 2 standards, the Justice Department has been able to insist that a jurisdiction create new minority districts as the price for preclearing a redistricting plan under Section 5. |
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